Here’s an article from the excellent StrangeHarvest. It really made me think, and it has a great title.

Lemon Squeezy: Design Tendencies after the Juicy Salif.

A couple quotes from the article:

…Contemporary design produces devices that are not intended to perform as advertised: as chair, table, lamp or whatever. They are devices whose function is a particular kind of cultural experience…

…If design can no longer be judged by its functional utility, the terms of reference for understanding the success of a design become more complex. Equally, form, composition and other aesthetic qualities are only the means by which an effect is manifested, not ends in themselves. Effect is how the design communicates cultural content and is therefore the primary attribute of contemporary design.

Designs apparent impracticality is not failure; it is the point from which it explores possibilities of contemporary culture (for those who find this a ridiculously pretentious position, there are plenty of products that work). This is why design chairs are almost always more uncomfortable than other kinds of chairs, why design tables are a challenge to use…

To the extent I’ve thought about these things, I pretty much agree with what the author is saying. It seems to me that most designers inherently understand these ideas before starting a project however… You’re never selling the object, you’re always selling the lifestyle and the accessories that come with it. In our current media-saturated culture, isn’t that as natural as breathing?

This could be really interesting. There’s not a lot of info on the site about this conference, but even the list of topics is inspirational. It’s in Budapest, which is also extremely cool.

Non-Western countries and developing countries are integrating social networking and mobile devices into their society much more quickly than many Western societies. Western notions of privacy and community seem quite distinct from the rest of the world, so as these technologies diffuse we may see some pretty cool things emerge.

Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking
Conference to take place in Budapest, September 25–27, 2008

Contributions are invited from philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, media theorists, and other interested scholars on the following and related topics:

Ethical implications of mediated relationships
The mobile internet
Exploring the self through social networking
Mobile social networking and citizen journalism
Mutual respect und acknowledgement
Gossip and social cohesion
The re-interpretation of privacy
Geobrowsing, privacy, and GPS-equipped phones
Real and virtual identities
M-learning, life-long learning
Inclusion of elderly people
Exclusion and the network effect
Social networking and big business
Conversational marketing
Netocracy
Fraud and secrecy
Surveillance
Informatics challenging bioethics (genomics and the new biology)

Amazing. Check it out on the TED site.

Just got around to checking this out a little – I’m way late on this one and I really have no excuse. Immediately ordered the book from Amazon.com. I wish I could check this out in person.

From the article in Seed Magazine:

“What we’re witnessing today is the emergence of a singular design creativity. Taking their cues from sources as varied as nanostructures, biological systems, topography, and cosmology, designers are introducing new areas of study and influence to their field and endowing their objects with new types of functional gradients. The goal is to facilitate as seamless a movement as possible from fast to slow, virtual to physical, cerebral to sensual, automatic to manual, dynamic to static, mass to niche, global to local, organic to inorganic, and proprietary to common, to mention just a few extreme couplings. Much of this is being done by bona fide designers, but scientists and artists have also turned to design to give method to their productive tinkering, what John Seely Brown has called “thinkering.” They all belong to a new culture in which experimentation is guided by engagement in the world and by open, constructive collaboration with colleagues and other specialists.”

Nothing else to say. It’s been said!

You should come to the party!